What Chris Stapleton Brought to Their Duet, Says Carly Pearce, ‘Blew My Mind’ (Exclusive)

Carly Pearce and Chris Stapleton’s duet, “We Don’t Fight Anymore,” has been climbing the charts, but until Wednesday night’s CMA Awards, they had never performed it together live. For Pearce, it was finally a dream come true.

The rehearsal itself, she told PEOPLE, was “like a religious experience — for me to stand there and hear him sing this song that I wrote and have this come to life.”

In fact, since the two parts were recorded separately for the single, the two Kentucky natives never even sang together in private.

And how did their voices sound when they finally came together live?

“Just as I thought,” Pearce, 33, said during a red carpet interview before the show. “Kentucky knows Kentucky. I don’t know how to explain it, but when we sing, it just fits.”

Pearce went on to describe how Stapleton’s input helped shape the song’s sound in ways she could never have imagined.

“He called me on the way to the studio and asked me what my wildest dream about a song was,” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Go do what you think.’ Obviously, I’ve had other collaborations, but it’s like they sing the verse, I sing the verse, we sing the chorus. But he took the bridge of this song, and he just made it his own and gave it a completely different meaning and a different voice to the song – and that delighted me.”

When Pearce finally listened to his song, she said, she asked her producer to remove her voice from the bridge. “I literally said, ‘Turn me off,'” she said. “This is his bridge. It’s almost a conversation, where we call and answer each other. He’s singing something that’s just better than anything I could ever tell him to sing.”

Chris Stapleton and Carly Pearce perform at the CMA Awards on November 8, 2023 in Nashville.

Terry Wyatt/Getty

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Pearce has already turned into a collaboration queen with her award-winning chart toppers “I Hope You’re Happy Now” (with Lee Brice) and “I Never Wanted to Be That Girl” (with Ashley McBryde). But, she said, she doesn’t know now if she can top Stapleton’s cooperation.

“I don’t know where to go next,” she said. “This seemed like the biggest.”

Chris Stapleton and Carly Pearce perform at the CMA Awards on November 8, 2023 in Nashville.

Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty

The single is part of a string of new music Pearce has released recently following the success of her breakthrough album 2021. 29, which chronicled her divorce from artist Michael Ray in 2020 after just eight months of marriage. Working on the next album, she admitted, “was really scary.”

“Life is not so chaotic anymore,” she said, “and we’re not in a global pandemic where you’re at home and you can write all the time. But honestly, I’m really proud of the new music, and I feel like it 29 what it’s done for me is give me the confidence to be the country I want to be, so I’m really pushing at it.”

Carly Pearce at the CMA Awards in Nashville on November 8, 2023.

Jason Davis/WireImage

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She promised that her new project, just completed, will continue to be inspired by her personal life, although the themes will not be as tumultuous as those depicted in 29. Pearce confirmed to PEOPLE that she is now dating her band’s drummer, BC Taylor, after ending her two-year relationship with Nashville real estate agent Riley King earlier this year.

“My personal life is good,” she said.

The fact that she and Taylor work and travel together, she added, made the relationship “a lot easier. It’s much nicer. It’s a tough world out there,” she said, referring to the music industry, “and it’s hard to relate to people who don’t know that world.”

She said the two became more than friends and work partners “over the summer.”

“I certainly never thought I’d be in this situation,” Pearce said, “but it just happened. I’m happy. It is fine.”

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Source: HIS Education